'Bad girls' is how society labels women in prison. But what if that label is a lie?
(And the MISOGYNIST, PATRIARCHAL, CHRISTOFASCIST, THEOCRATIC, WAR ON WOMEN continues apace)
‘Bad girls’ is how society labels women in prison. But what if that label is a lie?
Sabrina Mahtani
Incarceration should be a last resort, yet this broken and brutal system punishes marginalised women, most of whom are inside for non-violent crimes
Supported by
theguardian.org
Wed 3 Dec 2025 01.00 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/03/prison-feminist-issue-jailing-marginalised-women-ruins-lives-children#img-1
‘When you imprison a woman, you imprison a family,” a young woman in Sierra Leone told me, cradling her small baby in a damp cell. My mind flashed back to being a teenager, hearing my mother sob after receiving a phone call to say that my father had been arrested in Zambia for political reasons. I understand how children are collateral damage of imprisonment, and over 20 years as a lawyer, I know that is even more true when women – primary caregivers – are arrested. I have witnessed the devastating impact of incarceration on hundreds of women and their children but also how their voices are ignored, even in women’s rights spaces.
“Bad girls” is how society labels women in prison. But what if that label is a lie? The majority of women are imprisoned for non-violent offences, and my research, conducted by Women Beyond Walls and Penal Reform International over the past two years, shows that in most cases women are criminalised due to poverty, mental illness, abuse or discrimination. Half of all women in prison, as opposed to less than a third of men, have a drug dependence in the year before imprisonment. In Pollsmoor prison in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was once detained, a woman told me how she had been arrested for shoplifting, as she tried to feed her family. In Sierra Leone, I documented countless women who were arrested for owing money. In Kenya, I heard stories of women being arrested for “hawking” – selling food without a licence – to survive. Women from Mexico explained how the US-led “war on drugs” is fuelling a rise in the number of women behind bars, especially in Latin America and Asia. Many women sell drugs due to poverty and coercion; though not major players in the drug trade, they are easier to apprehend by police trying
to meet quotas.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/03/prison-feminist-issue-jailing-marginalised-women-ruins-lives-children#img-2
A two-year-old boy pushes a pram through the female inmates’ cellblock in Ciudad Juarez. In 2023, 344 children lived with their mothers in Mexican prisons. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty
The small proportion of women who commit violent crimes are usually survivors of violence themselves. Women such as 21-year-old Chisomo from Malawi, who was arrested for the murder of her ex-partner. He sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill her if she left him. Chisomo finally fled after he attempted to stab her. However, he later attacked her, stabbing her in her arm and chest. She grabbed the knife and struck back in self-defence. I have collaborated with lawyers across the world who fight for legal processes to take into consideration a woman’s background of poverty and abuse. But despite these efforts, a legal system built by men and for men continues to fail women through sexism and gender bias. Those who do not fulfil traditional stereotypes of the moral and motherly woman are often punished more harshly.
. . . . .
Next year offers advocacy opportunities to redress this omittance – from the UN Commission on the Status of Women to the Women Deliver conference. States must be held accountable for their failure to implement UN standards and lack of investment in alternatives to incarceration. Donors need to resource the vibrant movement of women with lived experience, lawyers, family members and activists, who are chipping away at a broken and brutal system. Prison is a feminist issue and is deeply intertwined with other women’s rights struggles, including gender-based violence, reproductive rights and poverty. Reducing women’s mass incarceration must be a global priority so that marginalised women and their children stop being punished for systemic injustice.
Sabrina Mahtani is a Zambian-British human rights lawyer and founder of Women Beyond Walls, which campaigns against the mass incarceration of women, and AdvocAid in Sierra Leone
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/03/prison-feminist-issue-jailing-marginalised-women-ruins-lives-children